Monday, May 3, 2010

Today we cut and shaped both our 16 foot keelson and stems. The keelson runs the entire length of the bottom of the boat (similar to a keel which is on the outside, our keelson will be on the inside of the skin) and will give the kayak 1-2 inches of rocker (how much it will rock back and forth from bow to stern if placed on flat ground). The stems are added on each end of the kayak, adding length to the gunwales and giving our kayak it's full length (which we actually haven't measured yet!).

To place the keelson we had to add temporary spacers on deck beam numbers 1, 7, and 11. The bow of these kayaks have much more volume than the stern, 10 inches from the top of the gunwale to the keelson in the bow slinking down to roughly only 6 inches in the stern. This has us think about storage space...

Once we finished this we got all of our oak ribs ripped and soaking in water, where they will remain for 3 days. In the mean time we're taking a few days off to work on some other SD related stuff, which at the moment there is a lot.

Time Spent Today: 5 hrs

Total Time Spent: 40.5 hrs

What's Next: Once the ribs have soaked for 3 days we'll start steaming and bending them into place.